I strongly believe that James & his Fiio's team are in tremendous pressure from the head-fiers who have extremely high expectation on X5's performance.

If James & his Fiio's team manage to release a flawless X5 yet outperforms the performance in the current Top End (Ivy league) DAPs such as DX100 (HDP-R10), HM-901, AK120 at half of their price tag, then he will make history & change the entire landscape of the Top End DAPs forever.

In fact, we always try to avoid competing with other directly, so the most pressure is when can we release X3 / X5. I think there are very few DAPs is around $400, and you guys already known I am listening to everyone in here and we known what we can and what we can't.

now almost 90% feedback in China is positive and we are busy in manufacturing enough X3 and amps to the market, it is not easy to us because most chinese audiophile trend to buy the most expensive audio device,

Is there any chance of Fiio becoming a publicly traded company? Some can only dream...

Why the heck would you want that?! Assuming Fiio becomes popular enough and sales figures are high enough to go public, can Head-Fi members afford to outbid a large company who would use Fiio to essentially stamp their products to claim that it performs as well as Fiio even if by that point they either changed all design directives if not changed the engineers?

You know what other companies were (temporarily) saved by enthusiasts? Lamborghini and Bugatti. Guess what - their enthusiasts don't have the deep pockets nor did they reach out to a wider market. VW had both and enthusiasts clamour over how the Lambo isn't Italian in feel anymore and how ridiculous the W16 is compared to a Quad Turbo V12 that can actually stand toe to toe with a stock F40 on a track with its A/C running.

Best way to help Fiio isn't for it to go public but simply support the products. You don't need to buy everything, or upgrade too soon either.